ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

Rocketboy Arts ensemble Mood Area 52 is one of the few groups in the northwest performing original tango music. The group formed in 1998 when accordionist Michael Roderick sought to escape from the bombastic late 20th century along with some of his closest musician friends. The lineup has changed, but their emphasis on nuanced, nostalgic, and harmonically surprising music has remained consistent. Mood Area 52 has performed with Naim Amor, Chuck Palhnuik, The Damo Suzuki Network, Rasputina, The Tin Hat Trio, Slowpoke, and Amy Denio. They perform in venues ranging from festival stages to old folks homes, performing alongside burlesque troops and providing original soundtracks to golden age films.

Original film score projects Mood Area 52 has undertaken include soudtracks to F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu and Marks' distopian sci-fi classic La Jette, and many films by Buster Keaton, Sunset Boulevard, and various independent films.

Mood Area 52 is available to play milongas and has connections with the Eugene, Portland, and San Francisco tango community. Their music and interviews have been featured on Argentine public Radio and on the Buenos Aires station Dos por Quatro.

so I was on tour, doing the west coast, and, as things go, you meet bands, open or headline for bands up and down the coast, from monday night to sunday night and back again... and the bands give each other cds, and it's all fine and dandy, except that most times, the cd given and taken never gets played more than 20 seconds, victim to the notorious game called "gong that song!"... well, this is the one cd that got the most play on our roadtrip up and down the coast. Repeated plays. A treat.

First saw them in an intimate setting -- what is beyond brilliant? Had the small crowd on their feet dancing for over two hours. Masterful craftsmanship, very organic and emotional -- the roots of tango, but recontextualized with other mixes of music.